Scientists to study grains of sand at Horseneck

Horseneck and East Beaches in Westport are among 22 beaches statewide at which the size of the grains of sand will be studied, allowing eroded areas to be replaced with sand of similar composition.

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By STEVE DeCOSTA

southcoasttoday.com

By STEVE DeCOSTA

Posted Jul. 26, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By STEVE DeCOSTA

Posted Jul. 26, 2014 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

Horseneck and East Beaches in Westport are among 22 beaches statewide at which the size of the grains of sand will be studied, allowing eroded areas to be replaced with sand of similar composition.

The most successful "beach nourishment" to an eroding beach — adding sand from offsite sources — is accomplished when grain size is matched as closely as possible to native beach sands, Jon Woodruff, a geoscientist at UMass Amherst, said in a release announcing the program.

"If beaches are unstable and eroding, we need to be ready and forward-thinking, and whenever possible have a plan in place for dealing with the problem," Woodruff said. "What beaches can we save and what beaches can't we save? With any of those decisions we need to know their composition and how dynamic they are."

Steve Mabee, a state geologist also involved in the two-year, $200,000 study, called the sand-matching "the eharmony or match.com of beaches."

"If you are going to invest in nourishing the beaches with offshore sand, it would be nice to know how long your investment will last," Mabee said.

Another element of the study will be taking core samples from back barrier marshes to give the scientists a look at how many destructive storms have affected beaches in the past several hundred years.

"Dating storm deposits in cores will provide some sense of the frequency of these larger destructive storm events in the past" and "could be a future indicator, if not really a predictor of how often these storm happen," because, "with climate change, maybe the frequency of large storms would change," Mabee said.

UMass Amherst received $200,000 from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to conduct the study, which will begin next month.